Lightrail: Oh boy, this is very frustrating

Question

Hi everyone,  
I am new here but having a terrible time with Lightrail that I hope you can guide me with. I set up a Windows 2019 Instance for $8/mth. I followed the online video instructions as I just need a simple web server to serve web pages. Since WordPress is not available under Windows I installed IIS and copied a single index.html file to it. I can remotely browse to the page albeit very slowly, or sometimes not at all.  
  
The system itself on AWS though is completely unusable, the browser-based RDP connection is very hit and miss and always takes many minutes to connect (if it does at all).  I stop the server or reboot but nothing helps with RDP and I am locked out for hours. When I **can** RDP connect each and every mouse-click takes minutes to respond, most of the time open windows (when they finally do open) display a "Not Responding" message as they slowly paint and repaint on the screen, application use on the server is impossible (they never start and even the Start menu can takes minutes to open). I have also used my local Remote Desktop client to connect with the same performance issues. I am on a gigabit connection.  
  
Can anyone tell me what I am doing wrong, or is Lightrail a realistic solution for a website? I am running IIS locally and have never had a problem but could that be incompatible with Light rail in some way? Is there an option I should be using that I am not aware of (all I did to start was select N. Virginia and Windows 2019). Any guidance you can give me would be a great help as I think I need to delete what I have and start again.  
  
Thank you for any help you can provide.

Answer

Hi, cutTheBlueWire  
  
It is reasonable that you try to use more expensive and powerful instance than 8$ one you choose.  
I recommend you check the minimum system requirement for Windows Server 2019 at  
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/get-started-19/sys-reqs-19  
  
AWS guys, 8$ 512MB memory instance can reasonably work for the Windows Server 2019?  
  
Good luck.  
Lipi

Answer

I thought I'd come back with an update:  
I created a new Windows instance. This time I went for Windows 2016 and 1vCPU with 2GB RAM instead of the 1vCPU with 512 MB last time, this is the $20/month option. This time it created a "t2.small" instead of the "t2.nano" it created late time so I **think** the CPU is better too.  
  
Result: a total transformation - everything works perfectly now and performance is very good. I was able to do more in 30 minutes today than I did in 10 frustrating hours yesterday battling the smaller $8/month ("Free") instance option. It now runs IIS great. My advice then is that if you are choosing a Windows instance on LightSail you need to stay away from that first $8 low-cost option and go with something bigger and with more memory  
  
Thank you.

Answer

Thank you Lipi,  
I think you are correct. I looked at your link and when I look at the instance type it is a T2.nano with only 512MB of RAM and an AMD chip which is probably not the most powerful so I suspect the machine is just too small. I'll try again with a larger instance and see what happens. Also, I choose the latest Windows Server 2019 which possibly needs more resources (Windows Server 2012 and 2016 are also options) and it is really locked down from a security point of view.  
Thank you!

Lightrail: Oh boy, this is very frustrating

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